


Chess

by ceterisparibus



Series: Prompts! [8]
Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Angst, Chess, Chess Metaphors, Fluff, Foggy Nelson Is a Good Bro, Gen, Human Disaster Matt Murdock, I mean the metaphors are there if you squint, Matt Murdock & Foggy Nelson Friendship, Matt Murdock Needs a Hug, but only a little bit of angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-15
Updated: 2020-06-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:27:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24737662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ceterisparibus/pseuds/ceterisparibus
Summary: Nothing but Matt and Foggy playing chess as a vague metaphor for their friendship but mostly just shenanigans.(Basically, LadyMaigrey left a hilarious comment about what it might look like for Matt and Foggy to play chess together, and I couldn't get it out of my head.)
Relationships: Matt Murdock & Franklin "Foggy" Nelson
Series: Prompts! [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1334596
Comments: 31
Kudos: 90





	Chess

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LadyMaigrey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyMaigrey/gifts).



It started in law school. Well, that’s where it started for Matt. Foggy, on the other hand, became a master of chess at his granddad’s knee. He was the only kid out of all his cousins and his brother to stick with the game; something about the multiple layers of strategy just appealed to him for some reason.

He also thought it was cool that chess didn’t allow for secrecy. There were no cards to hide and you always knew what the other person’s goal was. Everything was on the table. No tricks, no gimmicks, just skill. And since Foggy hated secrets and sucked at keeping them, and since he wasn’t _bad_ at strategy if he did say so himself, chess was pretty much the perfect game for him.

So imagine his shock when he got to law school, met his adorable new roommate who was rapidly becoming his best friend, and realized that Matt Murdock didn’t know how to play chess.

“Dude,” Foggy blurted out, “ _everyone_ knows how to play chess!”

Even with his glasses on, Matt’s deer-in-the-headlights look was obvious. He ducked his head, mouth twisted in a wry, sheepish smile, all of which combined to signal loud and clear that Foggy was blundering straight into Tragic Backstory territory.

Foggy hurried to un-dig that hole. “I mean, _not_ everyone. Just everyone who’s, y’know, kinda nerdy and pretentious, which I thought you were—I mean, you’re _not_ pretentious, you’re just a nerd, but sometimes the two overlap, and I just…I thought…” Slapping himself in the face, he cut himself off with a groan. “Kill me now.”

“It’s fine, Foggy,” Matt said in that soft, soft voice he had, even though now his eyebrows were scrunched together in that this-entire-conversation-is-making-me-uncomfortable look. “I just, I don’t think my dad even owned a chessboard when I was growing up, and no one at St. Agnes had the time to try to teach the blind kid how to play.”

Yeah, _duh_. In terms awkwardness (not the endearing kind, by the way, but the awkward kind), Foggy hadn’t thought he could top calling his new roommate a wounded _duck_ within the first five minutes of meeting him, but lookie here.

Hoping he wasn’t about to make everything worse, Foggy cleared his throat and asked, tentatively, “Um…do you wanna learn?”

To his undying relief, Matt immediately brightened. “…Yeah?” he asked cautiously, like he was somehow convinced the offer would be revoked the instant he appeared to accept it.

“Awesome, man!” And with that, Foggy plopped straight on the ground with his granddad’s ancient set, the set he’d been showing off when he started this whole thing. Matt lowered himself down across from Foggy, moving with infinitely more grace, and crossed his legs, head tilted just a bit to the left, and listened intently as Foggy explained the rules.

Well, he listened intently for about five minutes before holding up a hand. “Foggy?” he asked, an apology written all over his face for daring to have interrupted. “Which, um…which one is the pawn?”

Foggy’s heart dropped in horror as he realized he’d been chattering nonstop about the different pieces, gesturing fast from one to the other, having _completely forgotten_ that Matt had no idea what he was talking about. “Oh, uh…geeze, sorry.” He was blushing bright red, he was sure of it. At least Matt couldn’t tell. He reached for Matt’s right hand. “Look, it’s…um.” He faltered. “Is this okay?”

Matt’s eyebrows were raised now, indicating obvious bewilderment. But not discomfort, not anymore. “Sure.”

“Okay, so, _this_ is a pawn.” Foggy put the piece in Matt’s hands and carefully closed his fingers around it. “It’s the smallest piece.”

Matt frowned slightly as he turned it over in his hand. Then he nodded and held it back out for Foggy. “What are the others?”

And so Foggy went from piece to piece, letting Matt familiarize himself with all of them. He had no problem recognizing the rook and the knight, but he had to go back and forth between pawns and bishops and kings and queens to tell them apart. Eventually, he gave Foggy the go-ahead to continue with the rules and strategies, which he listened to with the same intense look that he adopted in class or that one time he somehow convinced Foggy to go to mass. (Foggy still wasn’t sure how that even happened. He _was_ sure he’d been hungover at the time, and he doubted the grumpy old priest would ever let him back in the church.)

Once Matt heard all the rules, they started a practice game. And Foggy was _floored_. Because Matt was…well, Matt was _good_. He methodically mapped out the locations of all the pieces between each turn (even though Foggy kept up a stream of narration; Foggy was mostly convinced that Matt didn’t _really_ expect him to cheat, but he also knew of at least two parts of Matt’s Tragic Backstory that prompted him to double-check, and Foggy figured there were even more parts he didn’t know about yet that had further ingrained suspicion into his best friend). Armed with his mental map, Matt approached the game with brutal precision. Foggy still won—he was more experienced, for one thing, and Matt still sometimes forgot where a piece was—but there was no denying that Matt had skill.

Well. That was in law school.

Now he and Matt had started their own practice (twice), put away a crime boss (twice), brought Matt back from the dead (once, unless you counted the whole Nobu thing, which Foggy definitely counted, so…twice), rebuilt their friendship (twice, at least) and survived countless near-death experiences.

Okay, so Foggy had survived significantly fewer near-death experiences than Matt, but he’d still survived them _plural_ , so he stood by his point.

And now things had finally calmed down again so that Foggy had time to revisit the important issues. Like Matt’s chess-playing capabilities. The realization that he had no idea how much Matt had been holding back with his whole oh-don’t-mind-me-I’ll-just-memorize-the-board-like-I-memorize-Thurgood-Marshall thing sent Foggy straight for Matt’s apartment, never mind the fact that it was after eleven at night.

Well. The realization, and the fact that Matt had admitted this morning, awkwardly and sounding slightly ashamed but also a little bit desperate, that he wasn’t sleeping. (He’d tripped over his desk and spilled coffee everywhere. It had been a bad morning, but the way Matt hunched his shoulders up as he made his confession was somehow the worst part.)

And Foggy remembered another confession Matt had made (once, when he was very drunk): that rooming with Foggy in law school had helped with the nightmares. Foggy’s steady heartbeat could, apparently, permeate even the worst of the nightmares, grounding Matt in something safe.

So Foggy thought…well, maybe he could help while solving a mystery of his own. It was a Friday; they didn’t have work tomorrow. Foggy had no reason not to reverently tuck his granddad’s chess set into his backpack and go across town to let himself in at Matt’s apartment with a spare key (a spare key that Foggy chose to interpret as a sign of their deep, mutual trust, forged through fire, rather than as a sign that Matt thought he’d need Foggy to break into his apartment in case he ended up dead from internal bleeding). Matt wasn’t there, of course he wasn’t there, he was out Daredeviling, but Foggy made himself at home anyway. He’d brought snacks and beer along with other sleepover stuff, and his phone was fully-charged, so he was well-equipped to entertain himself until Matt got back.

Which happened just before three in the morning. Foggy had fallen asleep despite his best intentions, but he woke with a spike of panic as the door to the roof banged shut. And there was Matt, tugging off his mask as he trudged down the stairs, looking tired and sad and angry all at once.

“Hey, buddy,” Foggy said cautiously, sitting up.

“What’re you doing here,” Matt mumbled, dropping his mask by the closet under the stairs and making his way into the kitchen for a water bottle.

“Just checking in on my best friend, that’s all.” Foggy kept his voice innocuous. “Rough night?”

“When aren’t they.” Matt returned the water bottle to the fridge, wiping at his mouth, and apparently realized he’d said too much. “If this is about, uh, this morning, I’m fine. You don’t have to worry.”

Foggy scrutinized him. He looked kind of grubby, but he really did look uninjured as best as Foggy could tell under the terrible lighting of Matt’s apartment. At the same time, he also seemed…really down. Was that normal? Matt always seemed so impassioned when he was talking about everything he got up to as Daredevil—righteously angry or just angry or triumphant over lives saved and justice served—but maybe the immediate aftermath left him drained. Fading adrenaline or whatever. Or maybe he was getting into a depressive episode. Not exactly unprecedented for him, although it’d gotten less common since putting Fisk away and rebuilding the firm and reconciling with Maggie.

Slumping down onto the couch opposite Foggy, Matt ran a hand through sweat-slicked hair and tilted his head. “Did you bring…chess?”

“Oh, yeah, I just…” Why had Foggy thought this was a good idea? “Didn’t know how late you’d be out and if you’d be up for anything when you got back, but I was really curious, so I just…showed up.”

Matt’s eyebrows were slowly crawling higher and higher on his forehead. “Curious about _what?_ ”

“I gotta know.” Foggy took a deep breath. “Were you holding back?”

“What?”

“Chess. Were you holding back with chess? Because you can like…echolocate where all the pieces are?”

“ _Oh_.” A grin slid across Matt’s face. “Maybe a little.”

“I knew it!” Foggy shouted, punching the air, only to drop his hand guiltily when Matt winced. “You okay?”

“Yeah, just…” Matt gave a sharp shake of his head, and Foggy fully expected him to downplay whatever was going on, but then he sighed. “Sometimes it’s hard to bring my senses back down. After being out.”

Foggy remembered what he’d said once about concentrating, focusing on letting things in. Matt had later explained more and more about how he perceived the world and how much iron control it took to let in _exactly_ what he needed to know, no more and no less. So, yeah, it made sense that after being out there fighting literally for his life and probably for quite a few other lives as well, it’d be hard to dial his senses back a bit.

That probably didn’t _help_ the whole not-sleeping thing. But Matt had been going out at night for a long time, apparently, and still sleeping…fine-ish. Something else was going on. Probably something that had happened, something bad, something that Matt kept being reminded of every time he went out.

Matt cleared his throat. “So, you came over after midnight because you were curious about chess?”

Foggy didn’t bother correcting him on the fact that he’d technically come before midnight and just nodded. “So I put all that effort into explaining where all the pieces were, with precise angles and everything, and it was wasted on you?”

A nervous look flashed across Matt’s face. “I mean, I—I appreciated it, but—but…” He trailed off.

Foggy waved his hand. “Relax, I’m messing with you.” (It _probably_ said something about how much repairing still needed to happen in their friendship that Matt instantly tensed up at every reference to anything Foggy ever did that was unknowingly unnecessary, but Foggy really didn’t want to get into that at whatever-time-it-even-was-anymore.) In an attempt to clear the air but also to maybe give Matt something else to focus on aside from whatever he’d experienced out there tonight, Foggy pulled the old chess set out of his bag. “You say you never needed my help? You think you could beat me without it? Prove it, Murdock.”

The corner of Matt’s mouth twitched up, like he wanted to laugh but was still too deep in vigilante-mode to manage it. “What, now?”

“Why not? You have better plans than playing chess with your best friend?”

Matt’s face instantly softened. The best friend line, it got him every time. “Just let me shower. The sweat, the blood, the dirt, it all gets…”

“Too much,” Foggy finished for him more quietly. It was still just a little weird to think about his friend, his unassuming, nerdy, too-Catholic-for-his-own-good best friend, coming home at night to shower off sweat and dirt and _blood_ before it turned crusty on his skin. It would always be weird. “Go shower, get comfy. And for the record, we don’t have to play tonight. I came prepared for a sleepover, so you can prove yourself tomorrow if you want.”

Pushing himself off the couch, Matt just nodded and disappeared into the bathroom. Foggy didn’t dare let his eyes close as he heard the water running, knowing that if Matt came out and found him asleep, Matt would never wake him up. Even if Matt needed company.

When Matt emerged fifteen minutes later, hair wet and skin scrubbed clean and dressed in sweats and hoodie, he stopped short of the living room, hesitating in the empty space in front of his doorway, a wary look in his sightless eyes as he fidgeted with the hem of his hoodie. “You don’t have to stay up with me. If this is about this morning.”

“I’m rolling my eyes,” Foggy announced. “I’m staying up with you because you, my friend, have challenged the very integrity of the revered game of chess, and I will no longer stand for your shenanigans.”

There wasn’t a lie in his heartbeat—half-truths were _excellent_ as long as Foggy didn’t overthink them—which seemed to convince Matt that it was okay to actually enter the living room. He lowered himself to sit cross-legged on the floor. Between his posture and his comfort clothes, he looked so like his old law school self that Foggy felt a pang. A bit of nostalgia, a bit of longing for simpler times.

“Cool,” Foggy said loudly, distracting himself from his own thoughts. Scooting off the couch, he set up the chess board between them. “And I’m _not_ telling you where anything is.”

The corner of Matt’s mouth rose in a nearly-suppressed smirk. There was that classic Murdock cockiness. He began with an aggressive first move, jumping his knight over his pawns to claim part of the open territory between the pieces.

And so the game was off. Foggy quickly realized that Matt really was tracking the pieces, not just with memory but also with his senses. He also realized that Matt had definitely been holding back when Matt won the first game.

Foggy narrowed his eyes. Matt was freakishly good at everything, except maybe softball, and from the full-blown smirk now gracing his face, it was obvious that he knew it.

So Foggy decided to, y’know…cheat. Just a little. Because it turned out that Matt hadn’t been faking confusion over pawns vs bishops or kings vs queens all those years ago: the pieces, at least in Foggy’s granddad’s set, were similar enough that he actually had to ask a few times for clarification.

“Bishop, right?” he asked, hand on a rook about to destroy Foggy’s bishop.

“Pawn,” Foggy lied.

Matt’s eyebrows pinched together. “Are you seriously…lying to me about chess pieces?”

“I mean, _why_ would I lie about that?”

Frowning suspiciously, Matt reached out and touched the piece, then skated his hands over one of his own pawns for reference, then glared sightlessly across at Foggy. “Because I’m beating you at your own game,” he said calmly, sliding his rook across to steal the bishop.

Foggy grumbled under his breath and devised a new strategy. He bided his time, waiting for the slight head-twitch that signaled Matt had been temporarily distracted by some noise outside, and then moved one of his knights a single space forward, putting it in the perfect position to take out Matt’s queen.

Matt refocused on the game, head cocking. “What—what did you do?”

“What makes you think I did anything?” Foggy asked innocently.

Matt’s eyes narrowed. “Everything about the way you’re acting. Including your heartbeat.”

“Even _if_ I did something, which you can’t prove, counsellor, I’ll never tell you what.”

“Oh, really.” Matt lifted his chin. Definitely getting into this new level of competition. Then he closed his eyes, apparently studying the board in his own way. When he opened his eyes again, he was rolling them. “You moved your knight.”

“ _How_ can you know that?” Foggy burst out.

“Memory,” Matt said smugly. “I wasn’t entirely lying about that.”

Right. Matt’s memory really was impeccable—when he wasn’t conveniently forgetting things like Claire telling him to not use his sprained wrist or Karen telling him not to attack two gangs right when they were attacking each other because they’d both inevitably turn on him or Foggy telling him that he’d quoted Thurgood Marshall enough for one day.

“Move it back,” Matt ordered.

“I can’t,” Foggy protested. “I already took my hand off, that means the move is permanent.” That was one of the most cardinal rules of chess, preventing take-backs.

“Not if the move was illegal,” Matt shot back.

Sighing dramatically, Foggy nudged the knight back into its original position.

Back to the drawing board.

Once again, he waited until Matt’s tiny head-twitch indicated his distraction. Then he swiftly reached out and swapped the position of one of his pawns with one of his bishops, putting the bishop in the better location. Then he held his breath.

When Matt refocused, it was immediately evident that he thought something was fishy. He paused before making his move, hand poised over the board. Forehead creased. “You did something,” he accused at last.

Foggy pressed a hand to his heart. “ _Me?_ Your very best friend for over a decade? I’ve never _done something_ in my life. Take your turn, Murdock.”

Matt chewed on his lip. “Wait.”

“I’m instituting a timer on moves if you don’t hurry up. Delay of game, five-yard penalty and all that.”

“You can’t institute a timer just to stop me from holding you accountable for cheating,” Matt retorted.

“ _Cheating?_ You wound me. It’s all just honest mistakes.”

Matt just waved his hand in annoyance, scanning the board with his senses. Finally, his eyes lit up and Foggy’s heart sank. “Your pawn and your bishop,” he declared.

“Um, what about them?”

“You switched them.” Matt pointed devastatingly at the board. “Switch them back.”

Foggy fought to keep his heartrate steady. It was just a stupid game, no reason to be nervous about this little white lie. “They’re not switched. Your memory’s not impervious, my friend.”

“No, no, I know this.” Matt started speaking faster, the way he always did when he started losing himself in a debate. “Three moves ago, I moved my knight _here_ precisely because I wanted to be ready if your bishop moved _there_ , which is now impossible because the bishop is blocked by your rook. Which means you must’ve moved it when I wasn’t looking.”

Foggy’s lips twitched. “I really hate to be the one to have to tell you this, Matt—”

“ _Don’t_ say it.”

“You’re never looking, buddy.”

“Foggy.”

Foggy shrugged. “I’m just saying, you’ve gotta agree that your accusation is a bit overbroad. How am I even supposed to know when I committed this alleged crime if the timeframe you’ve suggested encompasses _over twenty years_.”

“Foggy.”

Foggy shrugged. “You’re a lawyer, Matt, you’ve gotta be more specific.”

“Explain why the rook is blocking the bishop, then.”

“Because communication between my pieces has fallen to shambles and each piece is waging its own private war against your king. This isn’t an organized rebellion, Matthew, this is guerrilla warfare, and I can’t be held responsible for the actions of the combatants.”

Matt looked supremely unamused. “Put them back.”

“Put which back? I keep telling you, you need to be more specific.”

“Foggy, your—the—ugh.” Matt exhaled through his nose. “ _This_ pawn and _this_ bishop,” he said, setting a finger briefly on each. (His knuckles weren’t bloody. He’d gotten better gloves. Foggy was proud.) “Switch them.”

Foggy deflated. “ _Fine_. But let the record reflect, the pieces moved of their own accord. I had nothing to do with it.”

And Matt…Matt should’ve left it there. He’d gotten the desired outcome, after all: Foggy obediently switched the pieces. But if there was one thing Matt didn’t know how to do, it was how to quit while he was ahead. (Or…quit at all, really.)

So he fired up again. “As the general of your units, their indiscretion is still your responsibility.”

Foggy gaped at him. “How dare you impugn my integrity.”

“Did you or did you not allow your units to switch places?”

“I didn’t _allow_ it, it just _happened_.”

Matt’s voice sharpened, becoming his cross-examination voice. Low and quick and lethal. “So you’ll agree that it did happen.”

“I just did, you nerd.”

“And you’ll also agree that the units are under your supervision.”

“Guerilla warfare, Matt, I told you.”

“But you’ll admit that every other move in this game by one of your units _was_ , in fact, orchestrated by you.”

Clearly Foggy should’ve been insisting on his pieces’ sentience before now. “…Yes,” he said reluctantly.

“So your pieces are, more often than not, under your supervision.”

“…You could say that.”

“I’m not asking if _I_ could say that, I’m asking if _you_ would say that.”

He was ruthless. Foggy threw up his hands. “Fine, all right. I’m their commander, whatever.”

“Which means,” Matt said, drawing himself up and leaning over the board, “that you are either incompetent as a commander or a cheat, _wouldn’t you agree?_ ”

There was no way out. “All right!” Foggy exclaimed. “I’m—I’m not a cheat, though, I’m just…incompetent.”

Matt sat back, satisfied. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Foggy muttered bitterly. “Anything further?”

Matt flashed a brilliant smile. “No further questions, Your Honor.”

“Hallelujah.” Foggy turned back to the board. “Now _please_ take your turn.”

Still smiling, still apparently high on his victory, Matt slid his queen forward, lining it up to take out one of Foggy’s knights.

Except it wasn’t his queen. It was the virtually identical king.

Foggy gaped but carefully did not make a sound until Matt lifted his hand off the piece. “That’s your move, then?” he clarified.

Matt frowned. “Why, what—”

“No reason,” Foggy said breathlessly. The king wasn’t in danger yet—Matt wouldn’t move his queen somewhere exposed to any of Foggy’s pieces—and, besides, Matt was crafty: if Foggy took the king now, Matt would realize he’d made a mistake and claim that the accidental illegality of the underlying move negated the no-take-back rule, allowing him to undo the mistake. Before Matt could challenge him, Foggy set his knight firmly on a square that would allow him to take out either Matt’s king or his queen on Foggy’s next turn.

And so Matt immediately moved what he thought was his king: nudging his queen one single space away—a perfectly legal move, meaning that once he lifted his hand, the move could not be undone.

Foggy could scarcely believe his eyes. He struck Matt’s actual king with his knight.

“Nice,” Matt acknowledged.

“Not just nice.” Foggy held up the piece. “Feel this, buddy.”

Matt reached across and ran his fingers over the piece. His eyebrows shot up. “But—”

Foggy grinned. “Guess not even supersenses and a summa cum laude memory are everything, huh?”

Matt’s mouth moved silently for a second. Then he sat back with a quiet laugh. “I can’t even be mad.” He tilted his head downwards but lifted his sightless eyes to Foggy, giving Foggy one of the most adorable puppy dog looks Foggy had ever seen on him. “Good game, Fogs.”

“Round two?” Foggy asked graciously.

“Actually…” Matt yawned, distorting the word. “Sleep.”

“You sure, buddy?” Foggy asked, not even bothering to pretend like he wasn’t asking in light of _this morning_.

Matt just gave a small, tired smile. “Yeah. This was…this was good. This helped. I think.” He stood up. “But, um…” He shoved his hands into the pockets of his hoodie. “Are you staying?”

Foggy stood up with him. “That was always the plan.”


End file.
